A^ ^-<L M- 
 
 
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 AND 
 
 OF THE 
 
 POTT AW ATOMIES. 
 
 Bead before the Chic&go Elstorieal Society, December 13, 1870, 
 
 ■BY — 
 
 John Dean Caton, LL. D. 
 
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THE LAST OF THE ILLINOIS, 
 
 A. SKETCH 
 
 OF THE POTTAWATOMIE S 
 
 READ BEFOUE THK CHICAGO IIISTORICAf, SOCIETY. DEC. la, 18V0, 
 
 JOHN DEAN CxYTON, LL. D, 
 
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 CHICAGO: 
 
 RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY, PRINTERS, 61 CLARK STREET. 
 
 ISYO. 
 
On tho evening of December 13, IS'JO, the Honorable John D. Cato.v, LL. D., 
 late of the Supreme Court of Illinois, road before the Chicago Historical 
 Society a paper entitled " Tho lust of tho Illinois, and a Sketch of the 
 Pottawatomies," Upon the conclusion of which, on motion of Mr. Arnold, 
 seconded by Jas. L. Stark, Esq., it was unanimously— 
 
 Resolved, That tho thanks of tho Society are ten <red to the Hon. John 
 Dean Caton for the able and interesting paper be has read, and that he be 
 requested to place tho samo among the archives of the Society and furnish 
 a copy for publication. 
 
 
 
ADDEESS. 
 
 Of the ancient civilizations we know but little. The 
 beginnings of the Egyptians, the Etrurianfi, the Grecians, 
 the Eornans, and even the Milesians, are cither entirely 
 shrouded in the dark shadows of the far distant past, or 
 are only lit up by the feeble rays ailbrded by uncertain 
 fables or mythical traditions. Even far beyond these, great 
 peoples lived, whoso existence and civilization are testified to, 
 by broken monuments and ruined architecture, widely scattered, 
 especially over Arabia and some parts of Africa, while in our own 
 country and particularly in Yucatan, we see by tlieir works 
 that nations have lived of whom we know absolutely nothing 
 as to whence they came or whither tbey have gone. 
 
 Geologists tell us of older peoples who occupied many por- 
 tions of our globe, whose times they have divided into difter- 
 ent ages, as, the stone age, the bronze age, and the iron age, 
 because of the materials which they used in their arts, but of 
 their coming and their going they can tell us nothing, except 
 that they existed one after another and ceased to be. Whence 
 came the mound-builders of our own land, or those who 
 worked the copper mines of Lake Superior, or those whose old 
 inscriptions are found on the great stones of New Mexico, or 
 when they disappeared, none can tell ; they lived, made their 
 record and are gone, all else is as silent and as dark as the tomb 
 that covers them. Yet, in all these records history is written, 
 dim and shadowy though it be, still it is history, and we seize 
 
 55810 
 
iijx)!! each scntcnco of it as upon a precious treasure, uiul 
 wo ponder it and strain our eyes to find more than it really 
 tells, but the misty veil of antiquity hangs over it, and 
 finally we turn away unsatisfied. 
 
 When America was first visited by Europeans, at least those 
 who recorded what they sav;, it was occ'ipied by barbarous 
 tribes, some much more advanced than others, but still all were 
 barbarians. Tradition, among the more advanced, pretended 
 to tell how their ancestors had come from more northern 
 climes, till nnally they settleij in the milder countries of Mexico 
 or Peru, wliere the}' attained^a sort of semi-civilization far in 
 advance of the wilder nations, either to the north or south of 
 them, out whether their ancestors were the mound-builders or 
 the copper-workers, who once lived v/herc we live, and were 
 driven away by fierce northern hordes, more athletic than 
 they, or peacefully left the land in search of a climate less 
 rigorous, we can never know, nor can we satisfy ourselves of 
 the degree of credence which we should place in their own 
 traditions as told by their old men to the first Europeans who 
 saw them and by whom their stories have been handed down 
 to us. 
 
 We ilo know, certainly, that when the Atlantic coast was 
 first visited by white men who have transmitted to us accounts 
 of what they saw, they found here tribes of Indians who sub- 
 sisted principally by fishing and the chase, although they 
 practiced agriculture to a limited extent, for they supplied the 
 lirst immigrants to New England with corn from their hidden 
 stores. The early explorers occasionally found the same grain 
 cultivated in the valley of the Mississippi, and Lewis and Clarke 
 procured ; dnplies of it on the Upper Missouri. Still their 
 agriculture was too limited to have had much influence on the 
 density of population ; and without the cultivated products of 
 the soil no country can sustain a large population of men, if 
 
we except some tropic il countries whore spontaneous fruits are 
 in p3rpetual season, and even there tiie aboriginal population 
 was found to be very sparse as uotnparetl with countries where 
 agriculture furnishes the principal sustenance to man. 
 
 From the clianges which had recently taken place among the 
 original inliabitants of this country, when they were first dis- 
 covered, as told by their old men, and also from the changes 
 which occurred after their discovery, but before the extermi- 
 nating inlluence of civilization bore upon them, we may safely 
 assume that national and even tribal formations had been 
 ([uite recent, yet recent as they no doubt were, we know almost 
 nothing of them. While we know that some nations become 
 totally extinct by reason of aboriginal warfare alone, we cannot 
 point to a single instance of the birth and growth of any 
 native tribe unless the uniting of the remnants of several 
 broken tribes into one, may be so considered. 
 
 At last we arc forced back to the conclusion that it is only 
 comparatively in modern times and of civilized communities 
 that history, whether written in books or among the rocks, tells 
 us of the origin of nations. To this we can mention one 
 notable exception, liy divine interposition, we are told of 
 the beginning and of tiie progress, and by profane history of 
 the final extinction of one of the great ancient nations of the 
 earth. There we are told of its founder, Abraham, of its 
 struggles, of its triumphs and its misfortunes, of its victories 
 and its defeats, of its pure worship and its gross idolatry, and 
 of its final extinction as a nation under the lioman Empire. 
 
 Necessarily, the history of the aborigines of this country is 
 confined to the period since their first discovery by the educated 
 man, and to the few uncertain traditions told by them of their 
 comparatively very recent times, and most of these traditions 
 as handed down to us are purely of a mythological character, 
 and serve to teach us of the nature of the imagination or mental 
 
6 
 
 condition of tlic native rather than of actual facta that had 
 gone before. Nor do those who have made the study of the 
 native American a specialty seem to iuxve given that study the 
 form of connected history to any large degree, and lie that 
 would inform himself of such history must gather it from a 
 thousand did'erent sources, picking up a grain here and there, 
 as he can find it. 
 
 More than thirty-seven years ago, when I first became a 
 citizen of Chicago, I found this whole country occupied as the 
 hunting grounds of the Pottawatomie Indians. 1 soon formed 
 the acquaintance of many of their chiefs, and this acquaintance 
 ripened into a cordial friendship. I found them really intelli- 
 gent and possessed of much information resulting from their 
 careful observation of natural objects. I traveled with them 
 over the prairies, I hunted and I fished with them, I camped 
 with them in the groves, I drank with them at the native 
 spri'igs, of which they were never at a loss to find one, and I 
 partook of their hospitality around their camp fires. 
 
 Wild scenes have always had a charm for me. I have ever 
 been a lover of nature, and the enjoyment of those scenes 
 when prairie and woodland, lake shore and river were almost 
 everywhere as nature made them, have left behind a pleasing 
 memory which sometimes makes me almost wish that I could 
 live over again my younger days. Since nature's handiwork 
 has been defaced all around us by the hand of civilized man, 
 I love to hie away to distant shores and the far-off mountains, 
 and with a few friends of tastes similar to my own, enjoy the 
 wild scenery among the rock-bound islands of Puget's Sound, or 
 the still solitude of the high Sierras. Who would have thought 
 at the time of which I speak that he who then here enjoyed the 
 charms which nature throws over all her works, would ever seek 
 the far-ofl" scenes of the Pacific slopes in which to indulge his 
 favorite reveries? There are some who liear me now, who 
 
remember tlic lake beach with its conical sandliiil.s covered over 
 by the evergreen juniper whose fragrance loaded with a rich 
 aroma the soft breeze aa it quietly crept in from the rippling 
 ".vaters of the lake. 
 
 That old lake shore, fashioned as God had made it bv his 
 winds and waves for ten thousand years before, had more charms 
 for me, than since the defacing hand of man has builded there 
 broad avenues and great marble palaces, which are as far 
 beneath tlie works of nature's Architect, as man himself is 
 beneath Ilim who made all things well. 
 
 I thought that then a romantic place lit for the mating of native 
 lovers, in which to say soft words, and I felt assured that it was 
 so thought by them when once I was called upon to unite in 
 wedlock there a happy pair, whose ambition it was to conform 
 to the white man's mode in that solemn rite, and, as the 
 dusky bride explained, that it might last forever. 
 
 As might have been anticipated, neither history nor tradition 
 pretends to go back to the origin of any of the native tribes 
 who occupied this land when first explored by civilized man. 
 At that time the country where we live was principally 
 occupied by the Illinois Indians who were an important people, 
 who ranged from the Wabash to the Mississippi, and from the 
 Ohio even to Lake Superior, although there were a great many 
 other tribes occupying the same territory. Their chief location 
 was in Northern Illinois. Here was their home, and their 
 great metropolis was where Utica now sta,nds, in La Salle 
 county. There then stood the largest city ever built by north- 
 ern natives. It was a delightful place in the bosom of a beautiful 
 valley, and the city occupLed all the intervening space between 
 the river and the bluff, nearly a mile in extent. Their great 
 cemeteries there testify to the populousness of the place, even 
 were the testimony of the first discoverers wanting. If we do 
 not know of the beginning of any native nation, we are credi- 
 
bly told of the extinction of this great })oople, and that too 
 witiiin u century after they were found so populous and so 
 prosperous by the enterprising explorers. 
 
 Soon after their discovery by La Salle, the great Iroquois 
 confederation, whose battle fields were strewn with their vic- 
 tims almost from the Atlantic coast to the Wabash, and from 
 the Great Lakes, and even north of them, to the Alleghanies 
 and the Ohio, finally extended their enterprises to the Illinois. 
 With a great slaughter they defeated this hitherto invincible 
 people, laid waste their great city, and scattered them in 
 broken bands over their wide domain. From this terrible 
 blow they never recovered. For a century later they struggled 
 with waning fortunes against northern encroachments, till 
 finally they were exterminated by the Pottawatomies and the 
 Ottawas, at Starved liock, the Fort St. Louis of La Salle, 
 which overlooks the site of their great city and the scene of 
 their first great defeat and slaughter by the conquering Iroquois, 
 as I shall presently relate. There still stands this high isolated 
 rock as it has stood for thousands of years gone by, the swift 
 current of the river bathing its feet on one side, its summit 
 overlooking the broad valley and the many wood-clad islands 
 for many miles above and below it, fit monument to the great 
 departed who had, during many long years of peace and 
 security, looked upon its impregnable heights as a secure 
 refuge in case of disaster. Alas ! if it was secure against the 
 approach of human h,. .ds, gaunt tarnine could scale its 
 ascents and do its deadly work. There is and ever will be a 
 charm about the place, both from its own romantic surround- 
 ings and the melancholy story of the bloody scenes it has 
 looked down upon. While the visitor stands upon its native 
 battlements, silently pondering what has been told him, 
 insensibly his imagination carries him back to ages long ago, 
 and ne thinks he hears the wail of woe, oft and oftentimes 
 
9 
 
 repeated, and then again the song of revelry and joy sung by 
 those departed h:)ng before the white man saw it. The ances- 
 tors of my ancient friends wore responsible for the hist sad 
 catastrophe. 
 
 The Pottawatomies were a tribe of the great Algonquin 
 confederation, whose power was so severely felt by the British 
 forces when at war with France, in the middle of the last cen- 
 tury, though we do not know the story of their individual 
 prowess in that sanguinary warlare. 
 
 When Fathers Allones and Doblon first visited Green Bay, 
 and there established a mission, just two hundred years ago, 
 they found the Pottawatomies establislied on those verdant- 
 shores, and this is the first mention I can find of them in his- 
 tory. That was then their settled home, though they roamed, 
 far away, for they were in the habit of extending their visits 
 to the shores of Lake Superior. In 1071 they are mentioned 
 as met with at La Point, on that Lake, by the missionary 
 lathers, -not as residents, but as visitors. At that time they 
 were not known south of the lakes, for when Joliet and Mar- 
 quette returned from their discovery of the Mississippi, by way 
 of the Illinois River, in 1674, they met none of the Pottawato- 
 mies here. 
 
 In 1675, Marquette, no doubt by invitation of the Illinois 
 Indians, whom he had met the year before on his return witli 
 La Salle from the Mississippi, came from Green Bay to estab- 
 lish a Mission here. In this journey he was attended by a 
 party of Illinois Indians, and also by a band of the Pottawat- 
 omies. So far as we know, these were the first of the tribe 
 who ever saw the country south of Lake Michigan. They 
 coasted the west side of the lake in open boats or canoes, ^in 
 the latter part of the season, when the lake is boisterous and 
 forbidding. It was a perilous and fatiguing voyage of four 
 months duration, and sorely tried the endurance of the zealous 
 
10 
 
 missionary. They at last reached Chicago, just as winter was 
 closing in, and proceeded up the South Branch of the river to 
 where Bridgeport now stands, and there built a hut, in which 
 the missionary wintered. After the lonely and tedious winter 
 was passed, lie proceeded down the Illinois River to the great 
 city of the Illinois, below Starved Eock, and there established 
 the first Mission ever founded in the Illinois country, and 
 named it Kaskaskia. 
 
 How soon after this the Pottawatomies left their old home 
 on Green Bay, and sought more hospitable regions further 
 south, we are not informed ; nor can we tell whether the emi- 
 gration was gradual, or if they broke up all together, but as we 
 find them in their southern homes in different bands, the prob- 
 abilities are that they left in parties. A portion settled on the 
 Saginaw Bay, in Michigan, who were subsetjuently known as 
 the Pottawatomies of Saginaw, or of Huron. Others descended 
 as far as Detroit, and settled in that neighborhood. Others 
 found their way to the St. Joseph River, on the east side of 
 Lake Michigan ; and others, it may be presumed, came directly 
 to Northern Illinois, though it is possible they spread from 
 Michigan into Illinois. The precise dnte of these several 
 migrations we cannot give, but Cragon and Bouquet found them, 
 in the middle of the last century, occupying the country about 
 Detroit and Fort St. Joseph ; and we find no account of them 
 within the last hundred years and more at Green Bay. From 
 these explorers we get the first intimation of their numbers, 
 and yet this is of the most unsatisfactory kind. They set them 
 down at three hundred and fifty ; and Dodge, a quarter of a 
 century later, places them at four hundred and fifty, while 
 Hutchins places them at a still lower number than the first. 
 Upon these numbers we can place but little reliance ; at beat 
 it could have been but imperfect estimates, including no doubt 
 only those bands whom they met at Fort St. Joseph and 
 
11 
 
 Detroit, without taking into account those at Saginaw or in 
 Illinois. We may safely assume, also, that these figures are 
 designed only to express the number of their warriors, for Sir 
 William Johnson, who assembled the Algonquin confederation 
 at Niagara in 1763, informs us, that of the nineteen hundred 
 and thirty warriors there assembled, four hundred and lifty 
 were Pottawatomies, or, according to the old ortliography , 
 _Poule()tamies. With them and their associate warriors. General 
 Bradstreet there concluded a treaty which pacified all the 
 Indian tribes bordering the upper lakes, who had hitherto been 
 such inveterate enemies to the British Government and the Eng- 
 lish immigrant A reasonably conciliatory course with them 
 since, and a moderate share of good faith towards them, have ena- 
 bled the Canadas to live with those who resided on tlie north 
 shores, in amity in times of peace, and depend upon them as 
 allies in tinie of war. The number of warriors representing the 
 Pottawatomies at the Algonquin convocation at Niagara, shows 
 that the whole tribe must have been largely in excess of the 
 numbers given by Bouquet and others, and their report so 
 nearly approximates to the number of warriors at Niagara, as to 
 convince us at once that they spoke only of their able-bodied 
 men. Nor is it very probable that all the warriors which the 
 several bands of that tribe could furnish, made the long jour- 
 ney to Niagara to attend the council. The fact that the Potta- 
 watomies furnished nearly one-fourth of the representatives in 
 that council of the whole Algonquin confederation, should 
 convince us of the commanding importance of this tribe in that 
 powerful association of the Indians, and so were they the 
 last, south of the lakes, as we shall see, to yield up their place 
 to the irresistible advai.ce of civilization. 
 
 The fraternal relations existing between the Pottawatomies 
 and the Ottawas, were of the most harmonious character. 
 They lived together almost as one people, and were joint 
 
12 
 
 owners of their hunting grounds. Their reUuions were quite as 
 intimate and friendly as among different bands of the same tribe. 
 Nor were the Chippowas scarcely more strangers to the Potta- 
 watomies and tin; Ottawas than the latter were to each other. 
 They too claimed an interest in the lands occupied, to a cer- 
 tain extent by all jointly, so tiiat all three tribes joined in the 
 lirst treaty for the sale of their lands ever made to the United 
 States. 
 
 Chicago was ever an important point in the estimation of 
 the Pottawatomies and their associates, and here was the coun- 
 cil held which resulted in that first treatv in 132 1, when the 
 three tribes named ceded to the United States five millions of 
 acres in Michigan, 
 
 Since their emigration from the north, a sort of distinction 
 had grown up among the different bands of the Pottawatomies, 
 arising from their several locations, which seem to have 
 stamped upon their tenants distinct characteristics, lliose 
 occupying the forest lands of Michigan and Indiana, were called 
 l)y themselves and by the traders the Indians of the Woods, 
 while those who roamed these great grassy plains were called 
 the Prairie Indians. 
 
 The former were much more susceptible to the influence of 
 (jivilization tiian the latter. They devoted themselves, in a 
 very appreciable degree, to agriculture, and so supplemented 
 the fruits Oi the chase very largely in their support. They 
 welcomed the missionary among them with a warm cordiality. 
 They listened to his teachings, and meekly submitted to his 
 admonitions. They learned by heart the story of our cruci- 
 fied Redeemer, and with trembling voices recounted to each 
 other the sufferings of the cross. They bent the knee and 
 bowed the head reverently in prayer, and raised their melodi- 
 ous voices in sacred songs taught them by tlic holy fathers, 
 'i'hey received the sprinklings with holy waters, and partook 
 
18 
 
 «• 
 
 of the consecrated elements, believing devoutly in tbcir saving 
 grace. They went to tlic confessional with downcast looks, 
 and n'ith deep contrition told the story of their sins, and with 
 a radiant joy received the absolution, which iji their estimation 
 blotted them out forever. Here indeed was a bright field of 
 promise to those devoted missionaries, who dee})ly felt that to 
 save one heathen soul from the awful doom which they 
 believed awaited all those who died without the bosom of the 
 church, was a rich reward for a whole life of pincliing priva- 
 tion and of severe sufteritig: and their great ambition was to 
 gather as many redeemed souls as possible to their account, 
 each of which should appear as a bright jewel in the crown 
 which awaited them in that future state to which we are all so 
 rapidly hastening. 
 
 It was very different, however, with the Prairie Indians. 
 They despised the cultivation of the soil as too mean even for 
 their women and childi'en, and deemed the captures of the chas<> 
 as the only fit food for a valorous people. The corn which grew 
 like grass from the earth whieli they trod beneath their feet, was 
 not proper meat to feed their greatness. Nor did they open 
 their ears to the lessons of love and religion tendered them by 
 those who came among them and sought to do them good. If 
 they tolerated their presence they did not receive them with 
 the cordiality evinced by their more eastern brethren. If they 
 listened to their sermons in r'cspectful silence they did not receive 
 the truths they taught, with eager gladness. 'Even if they 
 believed for ihe moment what they were told, it made no per- 
 manent impression on their thoughts and actions. If they 
 understood something of the principles of the Christian relig- 
 ion which were told them, they listened to it as a sort of 
 theory which might be well adapted to the white man's condi- 
 tion, but was not fitted for them, nor they for it. They 
 enjoyed the wild roving life of the prairie, and in common 
 
14 
 
 « 
 
 with almost all oiher native Americans, were vain of tlieir 
 prowess and manhood, both in war and in the chase. They did 
 not settle down for a great length of time in a given place, but 
 roamed across the broad prairies, from one grove or belt of 
 timber to another, either in single families or in small bands, 
 ])acking their few eflects, their children and infirm on their little 
 Indian ponies. They always traveled in Indian file npon well 
 beaten trails, connecting, by the most direct routes, prominent 
 points and trading posts. These native highways served as 
 guides to our early settlers, who followed them with as much 
 confidence as we now do the roads laid out and worked by 
 civilized man. 
 
 Northern Illinois was more particularly the possession of 
 the Pottawatomies, but, as before stated, I have sought in 
 vain for some satisfactory data to fix the time when they first 
 settled here. They undoubtedly came in by degrees, and by 
 degrees established themselves, encroaching at first upon the 
 Illinois tribe, advancing more and more, sometimes by good- 
 natured tolerance, and sometimes by actual violence. I have 
 the means of approximating the time when they came into 
 exclusive possession here. That occurred upon the total 
 extinction of the Illinois, which must have been sometime 
 between 1760 and 1770. Meachelle, the oldest Pottawatomie 
 chief, when I became acquainted with them, thirty-seven years 
 ago, associated his earliest recollection with their occupancy of 
 the country. His recollection extended back to that great 
 event in Indian history, the siege of Starved Rock and the 
 final extinction of the Illinois tribe of Indians, which left his 
 people the sole possessors of the land, lie was present at the 
 siege and the final catastrophe, and although a boy at the time, 
 the terrible event made such an impression on his young mind, 
 that it ever remained fresh and vivid. I am indebted to Mr. 
 William Ilickling for assisting my memory on a point so 
 important. 
 
15 
 
 The death of Pontific, the great Ottawa eliicf, occurred in 
 1766. He was tlie idol of his own people, and was beloved 
 and obeyed scarcely less by the Pottawatomics. They believed 
 that the Illinois Indians were at least accessory to his murder, 
 and so held them responsible, and consequently the Ottawas 
 and Pottawatomics united all their forces in an attack upon 
 those whoso deadly enemies they had now become. I am not 
 satisfied that their previous relations had been those of cordial 
 friendship, but if the peace had not been broken by open war 
 there was that bad blood existing between them which must 
 have arisen between those who were making and those who 
 were suffering encroachments. 
 
 The Illinois Indians never fully recovered from the great 
 calamity, which they had suffered a century before at the 
 hands of the Iroquois. By that their spirit and their courage 
 seemed broken, and they submitted to encroachments, from the 
 north by their more enterprising neighbors, with an ill grace, 
 no doubt, but without protecting their rights by force of arms, 
 as they would have done in former times, and sought to revenge 
 themselves upon those upon whom they looked as their actual 
 enemies in an underhand and treacherous way. 
 
 In the war thus waged by the allies against the Illinois, 
 the latter suffered disaster after disaster till the sole remnants of 
 that once proud nation, whose name had been mentioned with 
 respect from Lake Superior to the mouth of the Ohio, and from 
 the Mississippi to the Wabash, now found sufficient space upon 
 the half acre of ground which crowns the summit of Starved 
 Rock. As its sides are perpendicular, except on the south 
 where it may be as'^ended with difficulty by a sort of natural 
 stairway, where some of the steps are a yard high and but a 
 few inches wide, and not more than two can ascend abreast, 
 ten men could repel ten thousand with the means of warfare 
 then at their command. The allies made no attempt to take 
 
1(3 
 
 the fort by storm, but closely bosiuged it on e\cry side. On 
 the nortli or river side, the upper rock overhangs the water 
 somewhat, and tradition tells us jiow the confederates placed 
 themselves in canoes under the shelving rock and cut the 
 thongs of the besieged wiion they lowered their vessels to 
 obtain water from the river, and so reduced them by thirst, but 
 Meachelle, so far as I know, never mentioned this as one oi ttic 
 means resorted to by the confederates to reduce their enemies, 
 nor from an examination of the ground do I think this probable, 
 but they depended upon a lack of provisions, which we can read- 
 il}' appreciate must soon occur to a savage peoi)le, who rarely 
 nnticipate the future in storing up supplies. No improvident 
 people could have subsisted long in such a place. How long 
 they did hold out Meachelle did not and probably could not 
 tell us ; but at last the time came when the unfortunate rem- 
 nant could hold out no longer. They awaited but a fixvorable 
 opportunity to attempt their escape. This was at last alforded 
 by a dark and stormy night, when led by their few remaining 
 warriors, all stole in profound silence down the steep and 
 narrow declivity to be met by a solid wall of their enemies 
 surrounding the point where alone a sortie could be made, 
 and which had been confidently expected. The horrid scene 
 that ensued can be better imagined than described. No quarter 
 was asked or given. For a time the bowlings of the 
 tempest were drowned by the yells of the combatants and the 
 shrieks of the victims. 
 
 Desperation lends strength to even enfeebled arms, but 
 no efforts of valor could resist the overwhelming numbers, 
 actuated by the direst hate. The braves fell one by one, 
 fighting like very fiends, and terribly did they revenge them- 
 selves upon their enemies. The few women and children 
 whom famine had left but enfeebled skeletons, fell easy victims 
 to the war-clubs of the terrible savages, who deemed it as much 
 
17 
 
 ii duty and almost as great a glory to slaughter the emaciated 
 women and the helpless children as to strike down the men 
 who were able to make resistance with arms in their hands. 
 They were bent upon the utter extermination of their hated 
 enemies, and most successfully «lid they bend their savage 
 energies to the bloody task. 
 
 Soon the victims were stretched upon the sloping ground 
 south and west of the impregnable rock, their bodies lying stark 
 upon the sand which had been thrown up by the prairie winds. 
 The wails of the feeble and the strong had ceased to fret the 
 night winds whose mournful sighs through the neighboring 
 pines sounded like a requiem. Here was enacted the fitting 
 finale to that work of death which had been commenced, 
 scarcely a mile away, a century before by the still more sav- 
 age and terrible Iroquois. 
 
 Still, all were not destroyed. Eleven of the most atliletio 
 warriors, in the darkness and confusion of the fight, broke 
 through the besieging lines. They had marked well from their 
 high perch on the isolated rock, the little nook below, where 
 their enemies had moored at least a part of their canoes, and to 
 these they rushed with headlong speed, unnoticed by their foes. 
 Into these they threw themselves, and hurried down the 
 rapids below. They had been trained to the use of the 
 j)addle and the canoe, and knew well every intricacy of the 
 channel, so that they could safely thread it, even in the dark 
 and boisterous night. They knew their deadly enemies would 
 soon be in their wake, and that there was no safe refuge for 
 them short of St. Louis. They had no provisions to sustain 
 their waning strength, and yet it was certain death to stop by 
 the way. Their only hope was in pressing forward by night 
 and by day, without a moment's pause, scarcely looking back, 
 yet ever fearing that their pursuers would make their appearance 
 around the point they had last left behind. It was truly a race 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 for life. If they could reach St. Louis, they were safe; if 
 overtaken, there waa no hope. We must leave to the imngin- 
 ation the details of a race where the stake was so momentous 
 to the contestants. As life is sweeter even than revenge, we 
 may safely assume that the pursued were impelled to even 
 greater exertions than the pursuers. Those who ran for life 
 won the race. They reached St. Louis before their enemies 
 came in sight, and told their appalling tale to the commandant of 
 the fort, from whom they received assurances of protection, and 
 were generously supplied with food, which their famished con- 
 dition so much rccjuired. This had barely been done when 
 their enemies arrived, and liercely demanded their victims, t!iat 
 no drop of blood of their hated enemies might longer circulate 
 in human veins. This was refused, when they retired with 
 impotent threats of future vengeance, which they never had 
 the means of executing. 
 
 After their enemies had gone, the Illinois, who never after 
 even claimed that name, thanked their entertainers, and, full 
 of sorrow, which no words can express, they slowly paddled 
 their way across the river, to seek new friends among the tribes 
 who then occupied the southern part of this State, and who 
 would listen with sympathy to the sad tale they had to relate. 
 They alone remained the broken remnant and last representa- 
 tives of their once great nation. Their name, even, now must 
 be blotted out from among the names of the aboriginal 
 tribes. Henceforth they must cease to be of the present, and 
 could only be remembered as a part of the past. This is the 
 last we know of the last of the Illinois. They were once a 
 great and a prosperous people, as advanced and as humane as 
 any of the aborigines around them ; we do not know that a 
 drop of their blood now animates a human being, but their 
 name is perpetuated in this great State, of whose record ot 
 the past all of us feel so proud, and of whose future the 
 hopes of us all are so sanguine. 
 
19 
 
 Till the morning light rovoalud tlmt tlic canoca wore gono, 
 tho confederates belicvod that thoir sanguinary work had been 
 80 thoroughly done that not a living soul remained. So soon 
 as the escape was discovered, the pursuit was commenced, but 
 as we have seen, without sucwiss. The pursuers returned dis- 
 appointed and dejected that their enemies' scalps were not 
 Imnging from their belts. But surely blood enough hail been 
 spilled — vengeance should have been more than satisfied. 
 
 I have failed, no doul)t, to [)roperly render Meachelle's 
 account of this sad drama, for I have been obliged to use my 
 own language, without the inspiration awakened in him by the; 
 memory of the scene which served as his first biiptism in blood. 
 Who can wonder that it made a lasting impression on his 
 youthful mind? Still, ho was not fond of relating it, nor would 
 he speak of it except to those who had acquired his confidence 
 and intimacy. It is probably the only account to bo had related 
 by an cye-witnes.'?, and wc may presume that it is the most 
 auth(;ntic, and may well deserve preservation, and .so'may be 
 worthy of a place in the archives of this Society, whose ])roper 
 mission it is to gather up and bring to light whatever still 
 remains to be gathered from the memories of those who are fast 
 fading away, of scenes whose theatre was the land we live in, 
 and of peoples who once occupied this territory. The few 
 dim lights still remaining will soon be put out, and darkness 
 and oblivion must shroud forever all that is then unrecorded. 
 
 This great event in Indian history secured to the Pottawato- 
 mies all the territory tlien belonging to the Illinois, and the 
 exclusive right to which was undisputed by other tribes. It 
 extended their possessions to the lands of the Peorias on Peoria 
 lake. They occupied to the Wabash as far south as Danville 
 and even beyond. On the other side they occupied to the 
 Rock river, though their right to a strip of hind on the east 
 side of that river was disputed by the Sac and Fox Indians who 
 
mngetl the prairies west of there and hcyond the Mississippi. 
 Tlioy extendod north into Wisconsin us far ns Milwaukee, 
 though their northern boundary was never well defined, but 
 their friendly relalions with the Chippewas j)rcvente(l this from 
 ever becoming u source of disagreement between them. After 
 the extermination of the Illinois, their general condition was 
 that of peace, and I have learned of few incidents since worthy 
 of record. As before intimated they had a perpetual diflicidty 
 with the Sacs and Foxes about the lands bordering on the east 
 aide of llock river, and when the braves of the contestants 
 met on the disputed territory they fought it out, but 1 have 
 not learned that the war was often carried beyond the con- 
 tested grounds, though the eastern boundary of these was 
 (juite undelined. 
 
 As a tribe, the Pottawatomiea may not have taken an active 
 part against the United States in the war of 1812, yet it is 
 certain that many of their young chiefs and braves did so. 
 On this subject they were extremely reticent At one time, 
 when riding over the prairie south of Blue Island, in 1833, 
 with Billy Caldwell, when the old chief as usual was answer- 
 ing my questions about the past and what portion of the 
 country he had visited, as it seemed inadvertently, he com- 
 menced givmg an account of an expedition of the British 
 from Canada across to Ohio, of which he and a number of his 
 wftrnors formed a part, but he had hardly got them landed on 
 our shores, when he seemed to remember that 1 was an Ameri- 
 can and that it was better not to enlighten me further on the 
 subject, and he broke off suddenly, nor could I by any means 
 prevail upqn him to return to the subject. 
 
 During the Black Hawk war, as it was called, in 1832, as a 
 people they remained loyal to the United States, but it was with 
 great difficulty that many of the young men were kept from 
 participating in the affray with the Sacs and Foxes. But the 
 
81 
 
 part they nctcd in tlmt affuir may bo found in tlie written 
 liistory of the times. 
 
 Chicago was ever a favorite resort of the Pottawatoniiea. 
 Here they chose to hoM their f?reat councils, ajid here they 
 concluded the last treaty with our Government as they had the 
 first, as I have already stated, twelve years before. This last 
 treaty was held in 1833, and I was a daily attendant upon the 
 deliberations of the council. By this time the Ottawas and 
 the Pottawatornies had become so blended and intermixed 
 that they had become practically one people, and were gener- 
 ally designated by the latter name. I do not remember the 
 number of Indians in town at the time of the treaty, but the 
 o.ssemblage was by no means confined to the chiefs who par- 
 ticipated in the deliberations. There were certainly several 
 thousand natives here, who were sup|)lied with regular rations 
 of beef and flour by the Government, and it was manifest that 
 they were quite willing to protract the conference so long as 
 these should last. At the close of each important delibera- 
 tion, especially if much progress seemed to have been made, a 
 keg of twisted plug tobacco was rolled into the council house, 
 the staves cut in the middle with an ax, and the chiefs 
 told to help themselves. This was accompanied with a box 
 of white clay pipes. They helped themselves with great deco- 
 rum, and even some ceremony. 
 
 By this last treaty, concluded at Chicagi>, in 1833, the 
 Indians disposed of all their remaining lands to the United 
 States, except some specific reservations to some of their chiefs, 
 and agreed to remove to a limited location assigned them west 
 of the Missouri river. When the treaty was finally concluded 
 and the presents all distributed, and no more rations served 
 out, they gradually dispersed till only those who resided in and 
 about Chicago remained. For two years longer this people 
 continued among us, subsisting as they had done before, noth- 
 
22 
 
 ing worthy of note, so far as I know, occuring in the meantime. 
 In 1835, and for tlie last time, the whole assembled at 
 Chicago, to receive their annuity from the Government, 
 and to make their final start for their new home. I was 
 absent at the time of their assemblage, and have no means 
 of stating at what date they began to make their 
 appearance in the town, for now Chicago had really 
 begun to present an appearance which would well justify the 
 name. Here for the first time, many who had through their 
 whole lives been in the habit of visiting this favorite location, 
 when the rank grass grew waist high where the Tremont and the 
 Sherman houses now stand, must have been deeply impressed 
 with the marks of civilization vastly more extensive than any 
 they had ever seen before or been able to comprehend. It assured 
 them, and they comprehended it, that they were already strangers 
 in their native land. That a mightier race had come, so far 
 their superior that they must fade away before it It is 
 emphatically true of all our American Indians, that they 
 cannot exist, multiply, and prosper in the light of civilization. 
 Here their physical vigor fails, their reproductive powers 
 diminish, their spirit and their very vitality dwindle out, and 
 no philanthropy, no kindness, no fostering care, of govern- 
 ment, of societies, or of individuals, can save them from an 
 inevitable doom. They are plainly the sick man of America; 
 with careful nursing and the kindest care, we may prolong 
 his stay among us for a few years, but he is sick of a disease 
 which can never be cured except by isolating him from civili- 
 zation, and remanding him to nature's wildness, which in truth 
 has more charms in many cases for even the white man, than 
 the refinements and the restraints of the white man's mode of 
 life. Our tastes for these are the results of artificial training, 
 and our tendency is constantly to relapse to a wilder life in 
 the woods and in the mountains. The bivouac of the soldier 
 
23 
 
 has a charm to which he often recurs with animated pleasure. 
 The camp-fire of the hunter lias a fascination which he who 
 has enjoyed it can never forget. And in our earliest childhood 
 we showed our natural tastes and inclinations by listening to 
 stories of these, with more avidity than any other. Mayne 
 Keid built his hopes on this juvenile taste, which he knew was 
 stronger than any other, when he wrote his charming stories 
 which have made his name so popular, yes, and so dear, too, to 
 the rising generation. Accounts of huntings and fishings, of liv- 
 ing in the woods and in the plains, or in some sweet little nook 
 at the foot of the mountain, down which the babbling brook 
 comes from the melted snows far above, and where nature 
 in her unbroken beauty and her sublimity reigns around in 
 her supreme silence, and there is no mark and no sound of 
 civilization near, — these have fascmations for even the white 
 race as well, which are entirely wanting in the most glowing 
 accounts of cathedrals, and palaces, and pictures, descriptions 
 of which fail to interest those whose tastes have not been 
 cultivated up to their full appreciation. If a love of nature 
 in her wildest moods and scenes be a relic of barbaric taste, 
 which civilization has failed to eradicate, then to that extent, 
 at least, I am a savage still. 
 
 This tendency in the white race to revert to what we may 
 term the natural tastes, is strongly manifested, whenever we see 
 one taken in infancy and brought up among savages. Almost 
 always he is the greatest savage of them all, notwithstanding the 
 hereditary influence through many generations of those culti- 
 vated tastes and habits which distinguish the civilized man 
 from the savage. This observation may not be confined to the 
 case cited, although that is perhaps the most convincing of 
 this tendency to revert to the savage state. We often see cases 
 where rnen have grown to maturity in the midst of civilized 
 society, uniting themselves with the native tribes, and enjoy- 
 
24 
 
 ing that life better thun the former, and chosiiig- to spend their 
 days with their new found friends, although it involves a sacri- 
 fice of all those ties which so strongly bind us to friends and 
 kindred and early associations. In such cases v/e rarely find 
 them practicing those arts which they had early Icariied. or 
 those habits of industry which is the distinguishing character- 
 istic of civilised man. It is undoubtedly true, in these latter 
 cases, that he who becomes a savage after puberty, has an 
 exceptional inclination to revert to the wild state ; still the 
 number is so considerable as to show us that civilization has 
 not been so long continued as to wholly change our natures, 
 and that it is almost, if not entirel}', artificial. 
 
 I think the facts will warrant the conclusion that this ten- 
 dency to reversion is much stronger in the male than the female. 
 In the few instances where the white female has been reared in 
 savage life, and has then been reclaimed, she has more readily 
 conformed to civilized habits, and has shown less longing for 
 the wild scenes among which she was reared ; and when she 
 has been introduced to savage life after maturity, she seems 
 always happy to escape it. In observing this fact, however, 
 we ought not to forget that the harder lot of the female among 
 savage peoples may tend to make her more willing to escape 
 from what is really a state of bondage and servitude, than with 
 the man, who is in every sense an equal, or, from his higher 
 intellectual endowments, may most likely occupy a superior 
 position. 
 
 Keverse the state of things, and how rarely do we find the 
 savage ever civilized. In the numerous instances where the 
 savage infant has been removed from the influences and 
 allurements of his ancestors, and reared entirely among us, and 
 taught all that civilization and Christianity could teach him, 
 but very few have been wholly weaned from the tastes and 
 inclinations which they have inherited from their savage ances- 
 
25 
 
 tors. Some notable and brilliant exceptions arc no doubt to 
 be met with, but they are so rare as to inspire ratlier our 
 remark and admiration than a well grounded ho])etliat we can 
 ever succeed in reclaiming them as a people. 
 
 The native American is in some respects a proud and a sen- 
 sitive being, and is not wanting in reflective powers. When 
 brought in contact with civilization, he recognizes his inferiority, 
 -and appreciates his inability ever to overcome it. He feels 
 that he cannot live with the stranger, excejit as an inferior, and, 
 inspired by his native pride, he would rather cease to be than 
 to do this. He appreciates his inevitable doom. He ceases to 
 hope, and then comes despair, which contributes more than all 
 else to hasten the result which he foresees. While all have 
 seen from the beginning that the aborigines melt away and die 
 out before the advance of civilization, in spite of the most 
 humane elVorts to })roduce a dillerent result, we may not have 
 appreciated all the causes which have contributed to this end. 
 Those which have been the most readily understood, because 
 the most patent, are the vices and diseases and poisonous drinks 
 which the white race has introduced among them from the very 
 first. If these were the only causes we might deem it possible, 
 by municipal regulations, to remove them. Wh'le this would 
 be a great boon which civilization undoubtedly owes to the 
 original owners of the soil where we are so rapidly expanding 
 into a great nation, I am satisfied it would not secure the great 
 end which philanthropy must most ardently desire. Still they 
 would not amalgamate with civilization, nor become civilized 
 as a separate people. They can only live and prosper and 
 multiply by continuing as their ancestors have lived, in a wild 
 state, roaming over large areas sparsely populated, de])ending 
 upon what they can secure of nature's raising, and "lien their 
 numbers become too great for subsistence upon such supplies, 
 they must become reduced by wars, disease or famine. 
 
26 
 
 The views I have suggested, of the effect upon the mind 
 and the sensibilities of the Indian, which is produced by liis 
 observations of advancing civilization as it intrudes upon him, 
 and its reflected influence upon his physical organization, I 
 think well illustrated and confirmed by the observations of Mr. 
 Sproat in his " Scenes and Studies of Savage Life." He 
 employed a large number of natives about his saw-mills at 
 Barclay Sound, on Vancouver's Island. Here the natives 
 were settled around hira in comfortable dwellings with their 
 families, and worked promiscuously with the white laborers. 
 The strictest temperance was enforced throughout the settle- 
 ment, and no violence was permitted toward the natives, but 
 they were treated with the utmost kindness and fairness. 
 They were well fed, well clothed, and carefully taught. Here 
 they were surrounded with all the best influences of civiliza- 
 tion, and as few of the vices as we may expect to find, when 
 the red man is brought in contact with the white. 
 
 For a time all seemed to go on well, and the experiment 
 promised a success. At length, however, a change became 
 observable, especially among the Indians who lived nearest the 
 white settlements. A few of the sharpest of the young natives 
 had become offensively European, as he calls it, but the mass 
 of the Indians had ceased to visit the settlement in their free, 
 easy and independent way, but lived listlessl}' in their villages, 
 brooding seemingly over heavy thoughts. They seemed to 
 have acquired a distrust, nay, almost a disgust for themselves. 
 At first they had looked upon mills and machinery, upon steam- 
 ships and upon great houses, indeed upon all the wonderful works 
 of the new comer, with curiosity and interest, but now, with dis- 
 trust, with disgust, and even with, despair; the effect of this de- 
 spair was now manifest. They even began to abandon their old 
 tribal habits, practices and ceremonies. Presently, without any 
 apparent cause, an unusual amount of sickness was observed 
 
27 
 
 among them, and the death-rate was largely increased, and so 
 continued during the five years that our author remained 
 among them. Nobody molested them. Notwithstanding all 
 their comforts and all the care bestowed upon them they sunk 
 into a gradual but sure decay. 
 
 The light of civilization instead of warming them into new 
 life seemed to bring a blight upon them ; they fJt that they 
 were an inferior race. They lacked the energy, and therefore 
 the ability, to become and live as civilized men, and their 
 proud hearts were crushed at the thoughts of living with the 
 white race as inferiors and therefore a degraded race, and then 
 necessarily followed disgust and despair, and then came disease 
 and death. 
 
 Had they lacked that lofty pride and that love of indepen- 
 dence which are so marked a characteristic of our Indians, they 
 might have enjoyed the comforts which civilization brought 
 them, without mortification at the consciousness of living as 
 inferiors among a superior race. But no kindness, no assistance, 
 no proffered recognition of equality, could hide from their 
 view that they were and must be inferiors, while they could in 
 contentment brook no superiors in fact. 
 
 In several cases advanced aboriginal Indian tribes, have by act 
 of Congress been declared citizens and endowed with all the 
 rights and privileges of citizenship. Still they were conscious 
 of their inability to properly exercise rnd enjoy those rights 
 and privileges. They knew they could not exercise the fran- 
 chise side by side with the white man, with the same degree of 
 intelligence and judgment, and so they scorned to use it. 
 Perhaps it would have been better for them could they have 
 ignored the real divStinction which existed between them and 
 the white race, and persuaded themselves, or been persuaded 
 by others, that they were the equals of any. They had too 
 much shrewdness to be thus blinded, and so they recognized a 
 
28 
 
 truth which another disposition would have concealed from 
 them, and submitted to what seemed to be a fate, in a sort of 
 reckless, sullen silence, at least till a possible onportunity 
 should occur for striking a blow, though it might be an 
 expiring one, for what they believed existence; and if not for 
 existence then for revenge — if not for the future then for the 
 past. 
 
 Laying aside what all must recogni/o as palpai)lo evils 
 introduced among them, as fraud, whisky, and demoraliza- 
 tion, there is, upon a deeper look beneath the surface, a fatal 
 difliculty which all the kindness and service which civilization, 
 philanthro])y and Christianity can render them cannot over- 
 come. 
 
 The proud and haughty chieftain clearly sees in the coming 
 of the stranger, and in his proffered kindness, the unavoidable 
 degradation of his people from that lofty estate of proud inde- 
 pendence which his forefathers maintained, and that at hist, 
 after being driven from their envied inheritance, and finding 
 no place of rest but in the grave itself, their final ex- 
 tinction from the face of the earth. It is a sad picture, and 
 yet it stands out before us in the light of the past as if painted 
 on the wall before us by the Divine finger. We may not deny 
 that the sacrifice is necessary to promote the greatest good to 
 the greatest number, but surely we may heave a sigh of sym- 
 pathy for the victim whose immolation is necessary to carry 
 out even a Divine plan. And so may we have some compas- 
 sion for him if in his death-throws he manifests his savage and 
 untamable nature. If it was his misfortune to be born a 
 savage, with no rights which the white man is bound to 
 respect, then it was his misfortune also to be born with a nature 
 which renders him incapable of civilization, a lofty desire for 
 independence, a profound detestation for everything like ser- 
 vitude, a deep-seated sentiment of revenge, and, above all, a 
 
29 
 
 total inability to appreciate how it is that he has no rights 
 which he may call his own, and which even a superior race 
 should rej^ard. 
 
 We must admit that even our boasted civilization has 
 its strange phases, and sometimes its manifest inconsist- 
 encies. We repeat the maxim that might nuikes right 
 always with reproach, and yet act upon it whenever the public 
 weal is supposed to require it. Perhaps the truest and the 
 best justification whiclx we can plead for insisting upon taking 
 the lands of the aborigines whenever we wish them, using no 
 more force than is necessary to accomplish what we deem 
 necessary — whether the owner is willing to sell them or not — 
 is that a few useless savages, who can do no good for the world 
 at large, and little good even for themselves, must not stand in 
 the way of the march of civilization ; that God made *he earth 
 and all that is upon it for llis own honor and glory, and that 
 both they and we are but tenants at His will ; and that it is His 
 undoubted right, whenever in His good pleasure He sees fit, to 
 eject those who in His estimation do Him no honor, and replace 
 them by those who may contribute more to His glory, and that 
 thus He is working out His great scheme conceived from the 
 beginning of all time. I say, if we can but thus console 
 ourselves that in what, to the superficial observer seems to be 
 spoliations of the weak by the strong, we are but instruments 
 in the hands of the Almighty to work out His great purposes 
 and to execute His solemn decrees, then, indeed, we may feel that 
 we have washed our hands in innocency. For myself, I have 
 never been a very ardent believer in what is sometimes called 
 special missions, and merely suggest this as the most plausible 
 justification which 1 have ever been able to contrive. Still, 
 I do believe that my old friends did not see it exactly in that 
 light when they turned their backs upon Chicago, the scene ot 
 so many of their grave councils and of their happy gatherings 
 
30 
 
 — when they looked for the last time upon the ever bright waters 
 of the lake, and bent their alow and reluctant steps to a land 
 of which they knew not, and in which they would be strangers ; 
 and yet there were old. men among tliem who could have told 
 them that their fathers had with bloodier hands expelled 
 another nation who had occupied the land before them, and 
 that no doubt the title had been thus transferred many times, 
 the conveyance always sealed by the blood of the last owner. 
 
 At this last gathering of the tribe at Chicago the total num- 
 ber of souls was about five thousand. While here they were 
 well fed by the Government ; and when they went they were 
 removed by the Government under the charge of the late 
 Captain Kussell. By him they were transported to their new 
 home on a reservation assigned them by the Government in 
 Clay county, Missouri, opposite Fort Leavenworth. Almost 
 from the beginning a feeling of hostility was manifested 
 towards them by the citizens of Missouri, which ^finally 
 resulted, at the end of two years, in another removal by the 
 Government, when they were located in Iowa, near Council 
 Bluffs. Here, again, their home was of short duration, and 
 they were removed a third time by the Government to their 
 present location in Kansas, where they have remained for over 
 thirty years. This reservation, however, they have now sold, 
 and are about to remove for a fourth time within little more 
 than a third of a century. Their new location is in the Indian 
 country south and west of Kansas. How long it will be 
 before the pressure of advancing civilization will again push 
 them ou in search of a new home, we cannot certainly predict. 
 We may safely say, however, that it cannot be very long. 
 We may scarcely hope that they will ever find a quiet resting 
 place above the earth. 
 
 In their Kansas home, the Indians of the wbods have con- 
 tinued to manifest their greater adaptability to conform to the 
 
31 
 
 habits of civilized life. They have there subsisted to a large 
 extent by agriculture. Same progress has been made in teach- 
 ing them in schools, and the iniluence of religion still exerts its 
 sway over them, or at least their religious teachers still com- 
 mand their attention and respect. Out of seventeen hundred 
 and fifty of which this band still consisted, according to the 
 last report which I have seen, sixteen hundred are represented 
 as subsisting by agriculture. 
 
 The prairie Indians yet remain as wild and untamable as 
 ever. They are still averse to the labors of the Held, and 
 enjoy the life of indolence or else the excitement ot the chase, 
 by which and their annuities from the Government they eke 
 out a scanty subsistenca The tinger of fate seems to be pointed 
 alike at the most civilized and the most savage. Final extinc- 
 tion is the end of the way down which all are sv^'^tly rushing, 
 and it would seem almost practicable to calculate with mathe- 
 matical certainty, the day when they will live only in memory 
 and in history. 
 
 They left Illinois thirty-tive years ago with live thousand 
 souls. At the date of the last report they had dwindled down 
 to three thousand live hundred, and at this moment their num- 
 bers can scarcely ex-jeed three thousand. From this each one 
 may calculate for himself when, the last day shall have passed 
 — when there will be no living representative of that powerful 
 people who but a century ago exterminated a nation at a 
 single blow at Starved Eock. The last of the Pottawatomies 
 will then have ceased to be. 
 
 I shall close this paper with an account of the great war 
 dance which was performed by all the braves which could be 
 mustered among the five thousand Indians here assembled. 
 The number who joined in the dance was probably about eight 
 hundred. Although I cannot give the precise day, it must 
 
82 
 
 liave occurred about the last of August, 1835. It was the last 
 war (laucc over j)erfbnnetl by the natives on the ground where 
 now stands this great city, though how many tliousands had 
 preceded it no one can tell. They appreciated that it was the 
 last on their native soil — that it was a sort of funeral ceremony 
 of old associations and memories, and nothing was omitted to 
 lend to it all the grandeur and solemnity possible. Truly I 
 thought it an impressive scene of which it is quite impodsible 
 to give an adequate idea by words alone. 
 
 They assembled at the council-house, near where the Lake 
 House now stands, on the north side of the river. All were 
 entirely naked, except a strip of cloth around the loins. Their 
 bodies were covered all over with a great variety of brilliant 
 paints. On their faces, particularly, they seemed to have 
 exhausted their art of hideous decoration. Foreheads, checks, 
 and noses, were covered wjth curved stripes of red or vermilion, 
 which were edged with black points, and gave the appearance 
 of a horrid grin over the entire countenance. The long, 
 coarse, black hair, was gathered into scalp-locks on the tops of 
 their heads, and decorated with a profusion of hawk's and 
 eagle's feathers, some strung together so as to extend down the 
 back nearly to the ground. They were principally armed with 
 tomahawks and war clubs. They were led by what answered 
 for a band of music, which created what may be termed a dis- 
 cordant din of hideous noises produced by beating on hollow 
 vessels and striking sticks and clubs together. They advanced, 
 not with a regular march, but a continued dance. Their actual ' 
 progress was quite slow. They proceeded up and along the 
 bank of the river, on the north side, stopping in front of every 
 house they passed, where they performed some extra exploits. 
 They crossed the North Branch on the old bridge, which stood 
 near where the railroad bridge now stands, and thence pro- 
 ceeded south along the west side to the bridge across the South 
 
33 
 
 Branch, which stood south of whero Lake street l)ridge is now 
 located, which was nearly in front and in full view from the 
 parlor windows of the Sauganash hotel. At that time thia 
 was the rival hotel to the Tremont, and stood upon the same 
 ground lately occupied by the great Republican wigwam where 
 Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the presidency — on the corner 
 of Lake and Market streets. Tt was then a fashionable board- 
 ing house, and quite a number of young married i)eople had 
 rooms tlu!re. The parlor was in the second story fronting 
 west, from the windows of which the best view of tlu; dance 
 was to be obtained, and these were filled with ladies so soon 
 as the dance commenced. From this point of view my own 
 observations were principally made. Although the din and 
 clatter had been heard lor a considerable time, they did not 
 come into view from this point of observation till they had 
 proceeded so far west as to come on a line with the house, 
 which was before they had reached the North Branch bridge. 
 From that time on, they were in full view all the way to the 
 South Branch bridge, which was nearly before us, the wild 
 band, which was in front as they came upon the bridge, 
 redoubling their blows to increase the noise, closely followed 
 by the warriors, who had now wrought themselves into a per- 
 fect frenzy. 
 
 The morning was very warm, and the perspiration was pouring 
 from them almost in streams. Their eyes were w"ld and blood- 
 shot. Their countenances had assumed an expression of all 
 the worst passions which can find a place in the breast of a 
 savage — fierce anger, terrible hate, dire revenge, remorseless 
 cruelty — all were expressed in their terrible features. Their 
 muscles stood out in great hard knots, as if wrought to a ten- 
 sion which must burst them. Their tomahawks and clubs were 
 thrown and brandished about in every direction, with the most 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 terrihlo ferocity, iiiui with u lorce and uner^^y whiiili could only 
 result I'rotn the higliest oxoitomont, und with ovory step and 
 every gesture, they uttered the inoal frightful yells, in every 
 itnaginuble key luid note, though gonenilly the highest und 
 shrillest possible. The divnee, which was ever eontinued, eon- 
 uisted of leaps and sp.isinodie8te[)s, now forward and now hack or 
 sideways, with the whole body distorted into every imaginable 
 unnatural petition, most generally stooping forward, with the 
 head and (ace thrown up, the back arched down, (irst one foot 
 thrown far forward and then withdrawn, and the other similarly 
 thrust out, frequently scpiatting (juite to the ground, and all 
 with a movement almost as (juick as lightning. Their weapons 
 were brandished as if they would slay a thousand enemies at 
 every blow, while the yells and screams they uttered were 
 broken up and multiplied and rendered all the more hideous 
 by a rapid elappin,'^ of the mouth with the palm of the hand. 
 
 To see such an exhibition by a single individual would have 
 been sufficient lo excite a sense <tf ('car in a person not over 
 nervous. Eight hundred such, all under tlie influence o( the 
 strongest and wildest excitement, constituting a raging sea of 
 dusky, painted, naked fiends, presented a spectacle absolutely 
 appalling. 
 
 When the head of the column had reached the front of the 
 hotel, leaping, dancing, gesticuhiting an 1 screaming, while they 
 looked up at the windows with hell itself depicted on their 
 faces, at the " chemokoman squaws " with which they were filled, 
 and brandishing their weapons as if they were about to make 
 a real attack in deadly earnest, the rear was still on the other 
 side of the river, two hundred yards off; and all the interven- 
 ing space, including the bridge and its approaches, was covered 
 with this raging savagery glistening in the sun, reeking with 
 streamy sweat, fairly frothing at their mouths as with unaffected 
 
35 
 
 rage, it seemed uh if we hud n picture of hell itaclf before us, 
 and II eiurnivjil of the duinued spirits tiioro confined, wlione 
 pastitnes we may suppose slionld present some suiili seenes hh 
 tliia. 
 
 At tliis staij;e of the speetaf^le, I was interested to obs«'rve 
 tlie effect it liad upon the diffenMit ladies who occupied the 
 windows ultnost within reach of the war (iluba in the hands of 
 the excited savages just below them. Most of them had become 
 accustometl to the sight of the luiked savages during the sev- 
 eral weeks they iiad occupied the town, and had even seen 
 them in the dance before, for several minor dances had been 
 previously performed, but this far excelled in the horrid any- 
 thing which they had previously witnessed. Others, however, 
 had but just arrived in town, and had never seen an Indian 
 before the last few days, and knew nothing of our wild western 
 Indians but what they had learned of their savage butcheries 
 and torturea in legends and in histories. To those most fiimiliar 
 with them, the scenes seemed actually appalling, and but few 
 stood it through and met the fierce glare of the savage eyes 
 below them without shrinking. It was a place to try the 
 human nerves of even the stoutest, and all felt that one such 
 sight was enough for a lifetime. The question forced itself 
 on even those who had seen tliem most, what if they should, 
 in their maddened frenzy, turn this sham warfare into a real 
 attack? how easy it would be for them to massacre us all, 
 and leave not a living soul to tell the story. Some such 
 remark as this was often heard, and it was not strange if the 
 cheeks of all paled at the thought of such a possibility. How- 
 ever, most of them stood it bravely, and saw the sight to the 
 very end ; but I think all felt relieved when the last had dis- 
 appeared around the corner as they passed down Lake street, 
 and only those horrid sounds which reached them told that the 
 
 •*•* •'.'..• • • •"<'•••' . .V. .. 
 
 • ••....•. • • • • <■ ' • • 
 
 •.••/.••.... 
 
 *..'••'•.;',' •»..', ? •• .•;.•.••» 
 
 • • • •.;••..:: :•• : ;. 
 
36 
 
 war dance was still progressing. They paused in their progress, 
 for extra exploits, in front of Dr. Temple's house, on the corner 
 of Lake and Franklin streets, then in front of the F.fchange 
 Coflipe House, a little further east on Lake street ; and then again 
 in front of the Treniont, then situate on the north-west corner 
 of Lake and Dearborn streets, where the appearance of the ladies 
 in the windows again inspired them with new life and energy. 
 From thence they passed down to Fort Dearborn, where they 
 concluded their performance in the presence of the officers and 
 soldiers of the garrison, where we will take a final leave of my 
 old friends, with more good wishes for their future welfare than 
 I really dare hope will be realized. 
 
 '«• ' ' ...» 
 
 
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